SHAFAQNA- Canada is known for its ethnocultural and religious diversity which is valued by the vast majority of Canadians as a characteristic of the country.
The Canadian census has measured the origins and religions of the population since 1871. This pattern has been evolving since it was first captured. In order to reflect the changing and complicated nature of diversity in the country, Statistics Canada has carried out extensive engagement and research to improve the collection and measurement of the ethnocultural and religious diversity of the population as well as the terminology employed to describe it. The present report will focus on religious diversity in Canada.
Christian Canadians
More than 19.3 million people reported a Christian religion, or just over half of the Canadian population (53.3%). This percentage, however, has been decreased from 67.3% in 2011 and 77.1% in 2001.
Catholics are the largest Christian denomination in Canada, with 10.9 million people (29.9%) in 2021. The United Church (3.3%) and the Anglican Church (3.1%), two other Christian denominations, each had more than 1 million people in Canada. Orthodox Christians (1.7%), Baptists (1.2%), and Pentecostals and other Charismatics (1.1%) were the other Christian denominations most often reported.
In 2021, just under 2.8 million people, or 7.6% of the population, reported being Christian without further indication of a specific denomination, double the figure from 2011 (1.4 million).
Canadians with no religious affiliation
Approximately 12.6 million people, or more than one-third of Canada’s population, reported having no religious affiliation or having a secular perspective (atheist, agnostic, humanist and other secular perspectives).
Canadian Muslims
Islam was the second most commonly reported religion after Christianity in Canada in 2021, with nearly 1.8 million, or 1 in 20, people. In 20 years, the share of the Muslim population in Canada has more than doubled—increased from 2.0% in 2001 to 4.9% in 2021.
Hinduism in Canada
Close to 830,000 people, or 2.3% of the total population, reported an affiliation to Hinduism. Like Muslims, the proportion of the population with Hinduism as its religion has more than doubled in the last 20 years. It is increased from 1.0% in 2001.
Sikhism in Canada
Moreover, the share of the population who reported Sikhism as its religion was more than doubled since 2001, from 0.9% to 2.1% in 2021. About 770,000 people reported Sikhism as their religion in the 2021 Census.
Canadian Jews
Approximately 335,000 people reported being Jewish in 2021. This number has changed little over the last 20 years; in 2001, 330,000 reported a Jewish affiliation. Although Canada’s total population grew, the proportion of the population with Jewish religious affiliation decreased somewhat from 1.1% in 2001 to 0.9% in 2021.
Buddhism in Canada
In 2021, nearly 360,000 people, or 1.0% of Canada’s population, reported Buddhism as their religion, the same percentage as in the 2001 Census.
Traditional Indigenous spirituality in Canada
Approximately 81,000 people, or 0.2% of the total population, reported a traditional Indigenous spirituality in the 2021 Census. The vast majority (90.2%) of people who reported this religious affiliation were First Nations people.
Of the 1.8 million people with an Indigenous identity in Canada, nearly half (47.0%) reported having no religious affiliation and more than one-quarter (26.9%) reported being Catholic.
The proportion of Catholics changes from one Indigenous group to another: 31.6% among Métis, 24.5% among First Nations and 17.4% among Inuit. Meanwhile, the share of Anglicans (37.4%) is much higher among Inuit than the entire Indigenous population (6.1%).
Religious diversity in Canada
The religious portrait varies greatly from one province and territory to another. Except Nunavut, Catholicism is reported most often in all provinces and territories as the religious affiliation, representing 29.9% of Canada’s population.
The only province or territory where more than half the population reported being Catholic (53.8%) is Quebec. Yukon and British Columbia are remarkable with respect to their population reporting no religious affiliation.
In Ontario, 16.3% of the population reported being affiliated with a non-Christian religion, the highest proportion in Canada. In particular, Ontario posted the highest percentage of Muslims (6.7%) and Hindus (4.1%).
Various religions were reported by the Black population, the main ones being Christian (no further clarification) (25.9%), Catholic (18.1%), Muslim (11.9%) and Pentecostal (8.0%). Finally, close to one in five (18.0%) Black Canadians reported having no religion.
Compared with the overall population, higher proportions of Arabs and West Asians reported being Muslims. Among the Arab population, 73.6% reported being Muslim and 19.5% reported Christianity as their religion (particularly Catholic [7.4%] and Christian Orthodox [5.7%]). Meanwhile, 57.2% of West Asians reported being Muslim and 28.5% reported having no religious affiliation.
Immigration and Religious diversity
Immigration is one of the major drivers of non-Christian religions. Immigrants represented the majority of Buddhists (68.9%), Muslims (63.1%), Hindus (62.9%) and Sikhs (53.8%). By comparison, they represented about one-quarter (23.0%) of the Canadian population in 2021. In addition, a large proportion of immigrants admitted from 2011 to 2021 reported a non-Christian religion: 18.9% reported being Muslim, followed by Hindu (9.0%) and Sikh (5.8%). These proportions are higher than the ones observed in the total population.
Based on the 2021 Census, 7.1% of the Canadian population reported being South Asian. Most of the people in this group were born in South Asia, including India (44.3%), Pakistan (9.2%), Sri Lanka (5.4%) and Bangladesh (3.0%), while 28.7% were born in Canada and 2.1% in Africa.
Source: Statistics Canada